Clear Design Podcast

As you may have seen, I had be gone for quite a bit. Not only was I down due to some medical ‘problemos’ (which I seem to be improving or hopefully over), but as well I had locked myself out of my server. So sorry for the no blogging for quite some time.

Though it seems I have come back with an amazing energy & drive to continue where I left off. Not only did this amazing genius at #GoDaddy (Joe) help me get back up and running, but I as well got the energy to hit the gym. So I did.

I’m feeling accomplished.

You don’t have to feel accomplished for changing the world, are making your life a bright shiny diamond, but yet, simply doing something you knew you had in you to do, and did it.

It’s Monday, we are all about to start a new week. Why not try to focus on you for just a bit this week or a bit every week for the next 5 weeks. Start with 1 of these 5 ways we tend to sabotage ourselves with.

I read this article written by Amanda Gardner and completely agree with it. I think everyone tends to sabotage ourself every week, if not every day.

Print this list out, put it up on your board or on your frig and refer to it everyday. Highlight one per week and focus on it. How could you improve each one of these aspects.

You will realize we all have major room for improvement!

Start it today, Monday September 15th! I will check back on this list in 5 Weeks guys.

Believe in yourselves.

Carlos Platero Jr.

#AllThingsPositive

We Sabotage Our Mental Health, Focus On 1 Per Week.

Our own worst enemy

Our mind and mood are keenly sensitive to the world around us. Distressing life events—a bad breakup, unemployment, the death of a loved one—often leave us rattled or sad, of course, but our daily routine and patterns of thinking also have a big impact on our mood. Bad habits like skimping on sleep, drinking too much, or nursing grudges can undermine our mental health, whether that means a brief episode of the blues or full-blown depression and anxiety.

Avoiding exercise

Why it’s harmful: In addition to keeping your body in shape, physical activity plays a key role in propping up mood; it can even help ease the symptoms of depression and anxiety, research suggests. Regular exercise appears to have a positive effect on brain chemicals and mood-related hormones, and it may confer psychological benefits (such as increased confidence) that foster better mental health.

What you can do: If you struggle to stick to a workout schedule, it might be too ambitious. To start, try setting aside 15 to 20 minutes per day for a brisk walk. Studies have shown that even modest exercise routines are associated with improved mood.

Ignoring clutter

Why it’s harmful: Even if your pack-rat tendencies don’t rise to the level of hoarding, unchecked clutter in your home can be a subtle source of psychological distress. “Clutter makes us feel weighed down, both literally and figuratively,” says Dawn Buse, PhD, a health psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center, in New York City. “It has been shown to be related to depression, anxiety, and even weight gain.”

What you can do: If you haven’t used something in 12 months, give it away, Buse suggests. And instead of spending your money on more stuff, consider saving up for a special dinner or vacation. Research shows that these so-called experiential purchases actually buy us more happiness than material goods do.

Not sleeping enough

Why it’s harmful: Anyone who’s missed out on sleep thanks to a deadline or bawling infant is familiar with the irritability, stress, and gloom that can set in the next day. If sleep deprivation and disturbances become chronic, they increase a person’s risk of developing depression or anxiety disorders.

What you can do: Prioritize sleep and practice healthy bedtime behaviors, such as limiting caffeine and alcohol in the hours before bed. It’s also important to curb your computer, tablet, and smartphone use late at night, Buse says; the blue light emitted by these devices suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin and can disrupt your circadian rhythm.

Drinking too much

Why it’s harmful: Alcohol depresses the nervous system, slowing you down and potentially dragging your mood down as well. What’s more, drinking too much alcohol in the evening—though it may initially make you sleepy—tends to cause nighttime waking and less refreshing sleep, Buse says.

What you can do: Limit your intake to “moderate” levels, which doctors define as one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. If it’s a special occasion and you do choose to exceed those limits, be sure to pace yourself, count your drinks, and alternate alcoholic beverages with water.

Great article for this weekend’s read and research I recommend for everyone.

“The Five Paths To Being the Best at Anything”.

I mostly like this myself, as I am a jack of all trades and I know I am good, if not great with most things I do. Don’t mean to come across cocky, but we all need to toot on own horn once in a while. Though I wonderful, within all my own insecurities what I do better and what I just don’t get. So reading more on why I may or may not do things well is pretty fascinating.

As you all know, I’m on the radio along side Vicky Sepulveda on our show call Chica About Town, on Radio Mujer 95.1 and I will say that it’s hard work to come across with all your duck in a row on air. After reading this article, I know understand how to get better and why all my duckies sometimes stray aways from a straight line. LOL

Here is the break down:

10,000 Hours (.…about that. Depends on what exactly we are talking about)

Have Great Genetics (well come on! lol)

Be Part of A Great Team (Have this part covered. Thanks Vicky)

Be A Giver (I am an extreme giver)

Combine Them (all or some of these above)

Enjoy this article!

Carlos Platero Jr.

The Five Paths To Being the Best at Anything.

By Eric Barker

10,000 Hours

Let’s get the most famous one out of the way first: Hard work pays off.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the theory in Outliers: approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice at something can turn you into an expert.

…the most elite violinists accumulated about the same number of hours of deliberate practice (about 7,410 hours) by the age of 18 as professional middle-aged violinists belonging to international-level orchestras (about 7,336 hours)! By the age of 20, the most accomplished musicians estimated they spent over 10,000 hours in deliberate practice, which is 2,500 and 5,000 hours more than two less accomplished groups of expert musicians or 8,000 hours more than amateur pianists of the same age.

That said, 10,000 hours is an average. And deliberate practice is not just going through the motions.

You’ve spent more than 10,000 hours driving but that doesn’t make you ready for NASCAR or Formula One.

Have Great Genetics

Even in this age of hyperspecialization in sports, some rare individuals become world-class athletes, and even world champions, in sports from running to rowing with less than a year or two of training. As with Gobet’s chess players, in all sports and skills, the only real rule is that there is a tremendous natural range.

There are also genetic advantages in the area of music, math and writing.

But, as Norton and Olds saw, as winner-take-all markets emerged, the early-twentieth-century paradigm of the singular, perfect athletic body faded in favor of more rare and highly specialized bodies that fit like finches’ beaks into their athletic niches. When Norton and Olds plotted the heights and weights of modern world-class high jumpers and shot putters, they saw that the athletes had become stunningly dissimilar. The average elite shot putter is now 2.5 inches taller and 130 pounds heavier than the average international high jumper…Just as the galaxies are hurtling apart, so are the body types required for success in a given sport speeding away from one another toward their respective highly specialized and lonely corners of the athletic physique universe.

Tall and thin? Try basketball. Short and thick? Weightlifting. Mom and dad are successful engineers? Give math a whirl.

Taking advantage of genetic gifts is a matter of finding what your body and mind might have been designed to excel at and aligning your efforts appropriately.

(More on genetic advantages — and how I had my own DNA analyzed — here.)

Be Part Of A Great Team

Working 10K hours and having naturally steady hands can be a great advantage to a doctor but surgeons only get better at their home hospital.

Why? That’s where they know the team best and develop strong working relationships.

Overall, the surgeons didn’t get better with practice. They only got better at the specific hospital where they practiced. For every procedure they handled at a given hospital, the risk of patient mortality dropped by 1 percent. But the risk of mortality stayed the same at other hospitals. The surgeons couldn’t take their performance with them.They weren’t getting better at performing coronary artery bypass grafts. They were becoming more familiar with particular nurses and anesthesiologists, learning about their strengths and weaknesses, habits and styles.

Even though they were supposed to be individual stars, their performance wasn’t portable. When star analysts moved to a different firm, their performance dropped, and it stayed lower for at least five years.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s drought lasted until he gave up on independence and began to work interdependently again with talented collaborators. It wasn’t his own idea: his wife Olgivanna convinced him to start a fellowship for apprentices to help him with his work. When apprentices joined him in 1932, his productivity soared, and he was soon working on the Fallingwater house, which would be seen by many as the greatest work of architecture in modern history.

One striking finding was the beneficence of Nobel laureates, or as Zuckerman termed it, noblesse oblige.In general, when a scientific paper is published, the author who did the most is listed first.There are exceptions to this, and this can vary from field to field, but Zuckerman took it as a useful rule of thumb.What she found was that Nobel laureates are first authors of numerous publications early in their careers, but quickly begin to give their junior colleagues first authorship. And this happens far before they receive the Nobel Prize… By their forties, Nobel laureates are first authors on only 26 percent of their papers, as compared to their less accomplished contemporaries, who are first authors 56 percent of the time. Nicer people are indeed more creative, more successful, and even more likely to win Nobel prizes.

We think of givers as getting exploited or walked on. And that definitely happens.

What I find across various industries, and various studies is the Givers are most likely to end up at the bottom. That’s primarily because they end up putting other people first in ways that either burn them out, or will allow them to get taken advantage of and exploited by Takers.

Then I looked at the other end of the spectrum and said if Givers are at the bottom, who’s at the top? Actually, I was really surprised to discover, it’s the Givers again. The people who consistently are looking for ways to help others are over-represented not only at the bottom, but also at the top of most success metrics.

For those that need a bit more information on bisexuality, here is a comprehensive video on that topic by R.J Aguiar and following it, a wonderful article from Huffington Post.

I agree with Straight, Gay or even Bi, frankly who cares. It’s your sexual business at the end of the day (or anything of the day for that matter). Just let love and let go of any title or stigmas.

Enjoy R.J’s video, may help you with any Bi question you may have.

Fun video.

Carlos Platero Jr.

Article by Sarah Barness:

If you think bisexuality is a gateway to being gay, or assume someone who identifies as bi is indecisive or lying to themselves, just stop. Stop right there.

In a video posted to YouTube July 7, online personality R.J. Aguiar provides a comprehensive, yet hilarious, explanation of what it means to be bisexual. Hopefully his spot-on explanation puts to rest the debate over bisexuality.

“First off, bisexuality exists,” Aguiar says in response to a reader’s doubts about his sexuality.

“These people [who ask narrow-minded questions about bisexuality] are the ones who like to think in binaries,” he goes on to explain. “When you’re little, binaries are all right because they are your first stepping stone to understanding how the world works.”

Eventually, he adds, one should realize the world doesn’t consist entirely of binaries like night and day, big and small, short and tall. There is a spectrum of times between night and day, just as there is a spectrum of sexualities between gay and straight, he says.

One of the most important takeaways from this video message, however, is that sexual identification is a personal matter that does not require justification or verification from others.

“It’s your job to go after what you want and what makes you happy,” says Aguiar. “It’s not your job to always be explaining yourself to other people. Especially when it comes to stuff that really isn’t any of their business to begin with.”

This Pawl Guel character has made a funny video about why your names are written wrong on your Starbucks coffee cups. The video was great, so Paul you did splendid my friend. Now I feel bad I don’t spend $5 for coffee! I too could have had a misspelled to-go coffee cup.